What readers think of The God of Small Things, plus links to write your own review.

This book is miraculously ,fantastically crafted. I have never seen such fluency in English language in an Indian writer before. The book only describes the naked truth behind the facets of society. It leaves the reader to gape and wonder why are the love lines are always being demarcated? Should love be a few dictated lines of the society?

It's true the book lacks a clear plot (at least in the first half, I haven't finished), but a book should be appreciated for what it is. If you are a writer, this book will enrich your life... at least, it did mine. What I feel I get most out of it is that just by reading this book I am better able to view the world symbolically. When I look at the sky or trees, I see life I had not seen before. The world is so much more meaningful.

Anyway, there are lots of smaller stories within the overarching story, and these should be valued as such because the journey is as important as the destination. Some of these are just profound and beautifully written metaphors which I found myself extending into my writing journal.

If you have any appreciation for social justice, this is an excellent read in terms of details as well. "Merciless" is a good descriptor, mercilessly honest.

However, if you are looking for a book that will make you a better person and currently your life is meaningless, this book won't give your life a deeper meaning. It's like the oracle at Delphi, which says, "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much", and tells you nothing about how to get there. Although it's a bit more complicated and closer to helpful than the oracle. If you already basically understand what the hell she's writing about, this will certainly enrich that understanding.

I have studied this novel and written a series of poems which today I descovered has gained me full marks for my A-2 course work. I therefore feel it neccessary to highly praise my benifactor: the more I read and re-read this book the more the exisit beauty of it awes me. The book seems created all at once, a perfect, crafted and intricate sculpture of a book. No one word is pointless, each heavy with meaning and reverberations that echo through the text itself and beyond. I find all to often that hype about a book sets it up for a fall and i never enjoy it so much as expected but this book will always exeed the words describing it. It is impossible for me to get close enough to this text. Its like a lover that you can't hug close enough or be near anough. I feel almost jelous that others can read it, i want it to be mine. I want one day to be able to write so originally without contrivences.

Though many can not appreciate the intense detail and admirable subtleties of this book I feel that it deserves some great care and attention. This book is not for light readers nor those whith strict gramatical ideals, and thats what I love about it. This book pushes all the envelopes and resides somewhere between epic poetry and socio-political comentary. Only through analyzing it's intricacy can you gain an appreciation for it as a true work of art. It's the next "house of leaves."

i am sadly to say this book was not what i thought it would be. i was disappointed in how other peoples got me excited into readin this book but after a chapter or two i was already tired of it, it just wasn't grabin my attention so i clearly had to give it a 1 =]

I wouldn't recommend this book. I had high expectations going into it from things told to me by my friends but, I was truley disapointed within my first 30 minutes or so reading. It seemed as if though there were many insignifigant little bits of information throughout. Detail is good, but to some extent. Good book if you like to read about Indian society.

I found this book very hard to keep up with because of the way that Roy jumps from past to present. I did enjoy the way that Roy uses words to describe people, places, animals, it's almost like if you are there or can just imagine it. Roy does play around with words and spells them backwards but I think that it is all intentionally and serves a purpose.

Over all this book was ok! It did have many good themes, like social classes, religion and politics. I would like to see Roy make this book into a film.

I felt that it was very hard to keep all the characters straight as the book often moved from past to present and back again. I did not think there was any real plot or true story and I felt the book was pointless. I would have stopped reading this after the first chapter however i had to read it as part of a course and so i did.